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Paul Has Been Good for Non-Interventionism (II)

Greg Scoblete responds to my earlier post on Paul and non-interventionism: A fair point, but is all this exposure really beneficial? To the extent that people are paying attention to non-interventionism, most of what I read is politely dismissive (it’s “isolationism”) or it’s obnoxious. You could argue that any exposure to non-interventionism is good exposure, […]

Greg Scoblete responds to my earlier post on Paul and non-interventionism:

A fair point, but is all this exposure really beneficial? To the extent that people are paying attention to non-interventionism, most of what I read is politely dismissive (it’s “isolationism”) or it’s obnoxious. You could argue that any exposure to non-interventionism is good exposure, but you can also see how negative associations can take root (i.e. – Ron Paul believes some nutty things. Ron Paul believes in non-interventionism. Non-interventionism is nutty.).

I would say that just about any exposure is good exposure. There is always the danger that non-interventionists can be portrayed in a unflattering light, but to a large extent negative associations are already there, and they aren’t going to be eliminated by waiting for a different messenger to show up. It’s true that much of the coverage of Paul’s views is “politely dismissive,” and there is naturally hostility from Iraq war dead-enders and other hawks, but there are also some more respectful and positive responses that one probably wouldn’t have seen five years ago. The fact that any major newspaper articles describe Paul’s views as non-interventionist nowadays rather than using the misleading and pejorative epithet of isolationist is a mark of progress all by itself. Thiessen and his ilk are bound to be opposed to Paul, because any success that he enjoys represents another repudiation of them and what they represent.

Jacob Heilbrunn said this of Paul the other day:

Now it’s fine and dandy to focus on Paul’s daffy view of complete isolation from the world, but he actually does have some cogent criticisms to voice of the GOP. In many ways, it must be said, he’s more sensible than the other candidates, at least by default. To put it another way, the GOP has lurched so deeply into the neocon fold that it makes Paul look reasonable. He doesn’t think that America has a patent on wisdom in foreign policy, while the other candidates vie to outdo each other on which country they would most quickly bomb to smithereens upon taking the presidential oath.

You might call this damning with faint praise, and it’s true that this is far from an endorsement of Paul or all of his views, but it is an instance of somewhat serious consideration rather than the automatic dismissal or denunciation that these ideas would have received just a few years ago. Even when the reaction to Paul’s arguments is critical, it now tends to be more fair and accurate in responding to what Paul has actually said. As Heilbrunn says, this can’t be separated from the ideological fanaticism that has taken hold of most of the other Republican candidates, but that shows why Paul’s candidacy is valuable: even if you cannot accept all or most of his remedies, he is one of two or three national figures in the GOP presenting any kind of alternative. If there were actually any conservative realists in the field offering a less thoroughgoing critique of U.S. foreign policy with some of the same admirable opposition to preventive wars and defense of civil liberties, perhaps someone could make a case that non-interventionists should be willing to settle for that, but there aren’t any.

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